You need more than just mscdex.

You need a suitable cdrom device driver that mscdex can interface with.

LiteOn was predominantly ide/atapi, so try vide.sys, atapicd.sys, oakcdrom.sys, and pals. (You only need one, but try to find the smallest one that works with your drive and controller)

Eg, from the win98 ebd:

[Config.sys]
devicehigh=A:\oakcdrom.sys /d:mscdoo1

[Autoexec.bat]
LH A:\mscdex.exe /d:mscd001

The 'mscd001' can literally be anything, as long as it matches between the driver loading, and the cdrom extensions being loaded.

THANK YOU SOO MUCH! I used oakcdrom.sys and it worked flawlessly. Anyways, Duke Nukem, here I come!

Wait, nope. When I type ANYTHING on D: it says:

Fail on INT 24

Try another *.sys (driver) and make sure the drive is working at all. Put it in another system for testing.

Error still occurs with ATAPI.SYS...

Here is Liteon's DOS cd driver v4.0 from the archives.....try it. if still an issue read the manual...

I second ensuring the drive actually works.

I do not know if your liteon suffers, but many optical drives have a belt driven spindle, and or, get a stretched/worn tray eject mechanism belt.

This either causes the disc to not spin, spin the wong speed, or fail to register the tray has fully inserted.

Other possible failure modes include dead laser pods, silly behavior on bus mastering controllers (or when paired with large lba mode disk drives), being all alone on an ide channel, and a host of others.

Go through the exhaustive checklist to ensure the drive is known good and working.

Horun wrote on 2024-06-15, 16:22:

Here is Liteon's DOS cd driver v4.0 from the archives.....try it. if still an issue read the manual...

I tried to install the drivers, but an error pops up.